It would have been easy to rank the little Lincoln Square resale shop Family Tree as the best thrift shop in Chicago, with its clean, well-chosen selection of the usual clothing, shoes and electronics that families needing to make ends require. But, similar to the mission of other resellers such as Brown Elephant, which donates portions of its proceeds to the support of the Howard Brown Health Center, Family Tree has gone the extra step to establish a voucher program for underprivileged local school kids and refugee families. When poverty is too often treated as a moral failing, and human beings displaced by war and strife are branded and refused as “illegals,” it returns a tiny bit of warmth to the world that a little North Side storefront would take it upon itself to try just a little bit harder to help out.
